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[Doom]

There's a dude at my Toys R Us who likes to pad his warranty/credit card sales figures by using his own natural ability to irritate.

I used to think he would just be a long-winded, overly enthusiastic fucker because he was a stupid, annoying twat. Turns out that he is aware enough of these traits to use them. He engages the customer in a long, hyper-drawn out explanation of the benefits of our warranty or card and he'll occasionally, when the customer is clearly comatose but too polite to tell him to shut the fuck up... he'll mumble under his breath "I'll just add that on for you", put the damn thing on, and hope they don't notice.

If they notice and come back, he recites the speech about what a good idea it is to have these plans.

I mean, there's nothing to stop them from going to customer service and getting the fucking refund, but about half of them give up by the second speech and I imagine several don't even notice.

And even if every one of these fucking things was refunded, he still gets a bump on his numbers and radios it across our walkie talkies so that the managers know he's the golden boy.

I am really not sure what to make of this, aside from simply never talking to him again. I know the weasels in management would never believe a word against him because they are probably invested enough in getting these stupid credit cards and warranties sold that they are actually fucking proud of him.

I guess my pet peeves here are scumbag thieves and the sort of circumstances that have driven every retail environment in America to demand credit card applications when you buy a $30 DS title.

I don't mind selling warranties, though. It's actually a pretty lenient plan where if you have the item and it's broken at all, you'll get a full refund if within 15-24 months. Practically pays for itself on video-game consoles. But just sneaking them through is the sort of thing Kenshiro would explode a man's head over.

[A²]

I would fucking love to see him try and pull that on my father.

He'd tell him to stop talking and ring it up, and if he opened his mouth again, my father would say the same thing, except it a loud, booming voice, the kind that makes people around you do whatever the fuck you say, which in this case is shut the fuck up and ring it up, register monkey

And lord have mercy on that poor boy's soul if he tries to 'sneak it on there.'

Also in general what the sleazebag's doing is a pet peeve. If I wanted a warranty, or whatever, I would have most likely asked for it.

[King Klown]

He may also talk to Lego toy boxes, whispering gentle reassurances to them.

[Büge]

There's a dude at my Toys R Us who likes to pad his warranty/credit card sales figures by using his own natural ability to irritate.

I used to think he would just be a long-winded, overly enthusiastic fucker because he was a stupid, annoying twat. Turns out that he is aware enough of these traits to use them. He engages the customer in a long, hyper-drawn out explanation of the benefits of our warranty or card and he'll occasionally, when the customer is clearly comatose but too polite to tell him to shut the fuck up... he'll mumble under his breath "I'll just add that on for you", put the damn thing on, and hope they don't notice.

If they notice and come back, he recites the speech about what a good idea it is to have these plans.

I mean, there's nothing to stop them from going to customer service and getting the fucking refund, but about half of them give up by the second speech and I imagine several don't even notice.

And even if every one of these fucking things was refunded, he still gets a bump on his numbers and radios it across our walkie talkies so that the managers know he's the golden boy.

This? This right here? This is the kind of thing that they want you to do when you work at a call centre. Having to force myself to be that guy is what prompted me to quit.

Well, that and a bomb threat.

[Kazz]

You can't see them as people.  Just walking, talking piles of money that should belong to your company.

[Bongo Bill]

Salesmanship is psychology, and sometimes it's underhanded. Make them want it and you are doing what you were hired to do. We're all consenting adults here, right?

[Brentai]

Yeah, the major reason why I could never get a promotion at the bank was that I couldn't bring myself to constantly screw people over for the company's benefit.

Now I constantly screw people over for my own benefit, and I'm more or less okay with that.

In this plenty and satiety etc etc etc

[Doom]

Salesmanship is psychology, and sometimes it's underhanded. Make them want it and you are doing what you were hired to do. We're all consenting adults here, right?

Err, that's not my issue with the scumbag.

I think if somebody sees the virtue of a new credit card or a warranty, they can buy it, sure. That is what I do, I tell them about it and answer any questions they have. It sucks that the store thinks we can actually convince people to spend money they don't have: the economy is not getting better any time soon and for a lot of people it's not really feasible to spend an extra $65 on a $300 console purchase that you want to last for 5-10 years. But that's another issue entirely...

This guydirtbag goes into a long spiel designed to browbeat you into accepting that you must get these things and sometimes he charges you for them without your consent because he assumes you won't notice. The only psychology at use is the same as a thief who out-runs you: if you can't catch him, he must've wanted it more, right? Not to mention that he isn't going to hand you the warranty brochure if he's doing this, so if the damn thing does break, you probably aren't going to be aware enough to get your refund.

The annoying speeches and shit-eating enthusiasm are psychology. The "my finger slipped and your total is $8 higher and I'm not mentioning it :)" should be criminal. If only it were practical/feasible to prove it.

[Büge]

No, see. There was a script we were supposed to follow. It includes long-winded reasons for why you should want this product and underhanded phraseology to get you to agree to me sending out a free* introductory package.



_{*trust me, you could hear the asterisk over the phone.}

[Mongrel]

Okay, see, this is something that bugs me, that stereotype about sales. But not in a "I'm a conservative! Business rules all else! Woo trickle down economics and laissez-faire economics!" idiocy kind of way.

I will say that by and large the 'sleazebag salesman' stereotype IS true, because ultimately, it's the easy way.

But sales is not an inherently immoral position. The shyster salesman is someone who is basically ripping off everyone - not just the customer. Ultimately, he's making a quick buck at his company's expense too. Either that or he's working for himself but is the classic "no-refunds type", but this is again, a quick-buck mentality.

The best salesmen knows that there can be sales transactions that resemble something other than date rape. That the best customers are the ones you keep and who return year after year. Furthermore, in some businesses, long-term customers form the majority of the client base and are the source of 'real' money.

If you rip someone off, sure you made a commission - and you and the company just lost any further business and all future commissions from that person. It's a terrible way of doing business.

Anyway, sales does not need to be and should not be the domain of of three-card-monty men. Proper sales is really all about managing the relationship between the customer and the company. If done properly, everyone will benefit. But it does take talent, and the businesses of the world need more salesmen than the world has produced on its own, so we have what we have.

Anyway, I realize that none of you are saying that out right, just commenting on the general attitude (this is the Pet Peeves thread after all).

I mean that irritates me about business as a whole. So much of what we accept as 'the usual practise' is actually terrible for business. There are so many things that companies do that consumers hate that are just appallingly self-destructive. The relationship between corporations and individuals should be much healthier than it is. Everytime consumer protection legislation has to be enacted because of some colossal jackass or lazy idiot, it represents a collective failure on our part.

The relationship as a whole between business and consumer is so adversarial that it has become ridiculous. I mean, we don't even bat an eye at businesses suing their own customers anymore. At this point I wouldn't even be surprised if debtor's prison came back.

Ah well. Blah blah blah.

[Brentai]

I dunno about The Homeland but it just takes a quick look at the people in the upper echelons to realize that, yeah, business here is dominated by conmen.

Which is not to say that's the proper way to go about things.  We are having some kind of recession after all.

[Mongrel]

I dunno about The Homeland but it just takes a quick look at the people in the upper echelons to realize that, yeah, business here is dominated by conmen.

Which is not to say that's the proper way to go about things.  We are having some kind of recession after all.

It's not the recession though. Big business has been dominated by conmen for AGES.

The dumb thing is that it doesn't have to be that way. Not in some pie-in-the-sky futuretopia way, but because it really is just better business not to fuck your customers in the eyesocket.

By and large, even the dumbest retards know when they've been ripped off _(eventually).

[Büge]

After the bill comes in, yeah.

[Ocksi]

Companies make quick bucks, appease the shareholders, make the founders rich, and either continue to do so, or die off after a generation has bought, made money, and sold into less competent hands.  The reason for this is that just as the government has run programs for the entirety of "modern times" that rely on an ever-growing public, corporations can benefit from the same.  For every honest salesman that quits in protest of selling his company's fuck-you-over credit line, there are plenty who will do so well, as Doom's Goldenboy, without ever giving a damn about what he might be doing to someone's personal finance, credit, or life.

By the same reasoning, for every person that walks out on this shitscam and never come back, there are a handful to take that spot.

While I don't agree with the business model, it works.  Taking advantage of the many who don't understand the scam at the cost of the few who do earns a fortune for both the upper levels of any given company and also the current holders of the corporation.

I agree with IM that good business practice makes for long-term and, in the end, more loyal customers (and I can think of many, many examples off the top of my head).  That long term return doesn't mean as much to the quick-returns shareholder, and thus the executive level of any given corporation, however.  And when that model fails, it's your job as "responsible" market-player to not be holding the bag.

[Mongrel]

Well, a corporation's tendency to amoral behaviour used to be mitigated by the fact that they - like people (har har) - were supposed to try and maximize their lifespans. The officers of the company were expected to place the long-term survival of the company over any immediate shareholder gains.

This gave us a lot of positive things, better business relations, more spending on R&D, better long-term planning, more careful growth, etc.

I'm not saying that there's a time when businesses were angelic, but there used to be a time when a few natural social checks on corporate behaviour existed. Those natural checks have for the most part disintegrated (I'll leave aside the lengthy discussion of the history of legislation designed to bring corporations to heel). But nowadays large corporations are often treated like schemes barely more legal than the Madoff Ponzi operation.

The current level of relations between businesses and the public is probably more adversarial than it has been since the Robber Baron era, with lawyers typically flung around like howitzer shells. Only now there are very very few small-time local stores to counterbalance the huge businesses. Maybe Imperial Oil was ripping people off, but you still had the local grocer. It wasn't always true in all cases - not all corps were awful and the character of a local business was dependent on the character of the owner - but the average consumer didn't have to be resentful of every transaction made with a business. Hell, sound local entrepreneurialism was one of the strongest disincentives to Communism there was.

Now everything is run by large corporations, or smaller companies who blindly ape large corporate practices. So the damaging effects of bad business behaviour extend way farther. In the Robber Baron days, companies were most often decried for abusing their own workers, but now the consuming public suffers just as much, if not more.

We had labour movements - perhaps it's time for a consumer's movement?

[Mongrel]

On re-reading my posts*, I realize there's one thing I continually implied, but perhaps did not make absolutely clear:

I am totally for almost all the substantial legislation passed in the last century to regulate business for the public good. Not that every last law has been good, but by and large the legislation was needed and appropriate.

*_{No, I'm not that narcisissitic - I mistakenly thought there was a reply.}

[SCD]

Well hello thread

I really don't have much to add, except that if you're really into marketing and selling, you should really check out this CBC Podcast called "The Age of Persuasion".  It's done by a lad by the name "Terry 'o Reilly" and explores all the avenues of marketing throughout the history of the 20th century. 

He really makes it interesting and intelligent. 

[Brentai]

One thing I've learned from working directly for marketing guys is that if nobody stops them, they'll just go ahead and do things which are flat-out illegal.  It's not that they're actively trying to be bastards so much as that the business mentality seems to involve a concept of law that boils down to "Anything I haven't yet been told to stop doing is okay."  Once you actually say something about it they usually cut it out and try something else which may or may not be better.  An American businessman is a lot like a small child or a lemming, except that they're blindly pushing everyone else off of cliffs.

[Ted Belmont]

So they're more like Disney cameramen than lemmings.

[Joxam]

See, this is why I'm actually glad about the department of the store I work in. When I sell someone an SD card for their camera, or usb cable for their printer, I'm actually selling them something they need. However, I cannot and will not sell some bullshit credit card plans or other things like that. But, if you need an SD card to use your camera, and the makers of the camera don't include them in their package, I'm going to sell you one.

Its funny that this mentality throughout our store (I mean store as in the store I work in, not company) has caused us to lead our district in attachment/add-on sales for the last two years.

Or rather, I think its funny that, working for a corporation that is known for fucking people over (Wal-Mart), we do better than anyone else in a tri-state area simply by providing the customers with what they need instead of trying to sell them the useless shit our company markets for this purpose (attachment sales).